Unsaved
by StopTheWorldImGettingDizzy
Summary: One day she wakes up and she's got that Nancy Botwin urge for going, and this is the day she drives north to find him. Weeds, NancyConrad, early season four.


They needed closure, so I gave them some. Feedback appreciated.

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One day she wakes up and she's got that Nancy Botwin urge for going, and this is the day she drives north to find him.

It's six AM, and Andy is inexplicably awake, sprawled in his boxers partially across, partially beneath the couch cushions. He wants to know where she's going. (They all worry, without considering it or letting it get to them, that she'll leave one day, just up and skedaddle, off to Mexico or Canada or anywhere but the place occupied by the people she remembers.)

"To find something," she calls back absently, sliding her bag off the table and onto her shoulder. She's already got her sunglasses on.

She floors the gas without checking the mirrors and the car spits backward into the center of the street. She's taken to taking more liberties with her safety lately. She is selfish a lot of the time, but not in this case: her kids would probably be better off if she checked out. She wouldn't do it on purpose, would never admit defeat on so grand a scale, but there doesn't seem to be any harm in dispensing with some of the more tedious precautions. She turns sharply, heading for the nearest freeway, and as the car straightens out, her chin automatically juts down to her right, tongue poking around till it wraps around the straw sticking out of her coffee cup.

Some_one_, really, but she wouldn't have told Andy that even if she'd thought of it at the time.

A red Mercedes cuts her off. "_Asshole_," she mutters. She has no energy for yelling. The sun is already too bright through the tinted windshield and her glasses and there's a stripe of sweat between her breasts even though she decided to forget the bra. Everything is waves of heat and whispers of ash, everything since they left there and came here.

Smooth brown fingers on her white stomach, holding her down while a wet, relentless tongue dabbed pressure against her skin: the image springs to mind alarmingly fast and out of no recognizable source. Without a thought, she swerves to change lanes (two drivers honk).

He won't be in Agrestic. Or Majestic. She passes exit after exit and never thinks to head for the few charred square miles formerly known as home, because he won't be there. As for the others, Celia, Doug, et al, well, fuck 'em all (the thought is almost fond).

There really was a time when she thought everything might be okay. That was a different Nancy, a Nancy more naïve and more breakable, a Nancy who broke down in his strong arms and took him up on his promise of comfort, an indefinitely extended promise that maybe hadn't ended, hasn't ended, and maybe that's why she's here, steadily climbing the latitude lines.

He must have told her once, _what if what if we have to run_, and her brain must have remembered without telling her, because she drives herself off an exit labeled Paradale like she knows where she's going.

Twice, that first night, the second time on the floor, and there were light bite marks in at least six different places when she showered the next morning, washcloth stinging there and there and there and her face almost meaning the smile it held and her answers closer than they had ever been since the last time she cried with him.

Some_ones_. It isn't only Conrad she's looking for today.

There are more trees than Agrestic ever had but the scrubbed-to-a-gleam feeling of suburbia is the same, and it hasn't ever made perfect sense to her what he's doing here, what he's doing in this kind of life, when it's crystal clear that he could have more. Family, she thinks. Not everyone can be Judah. And why cut ties when there is nothing to cut them _for_?

She should know better than to think she'd ever be somebody's reason a second time around.

Gravel driveways and chain-link fences and hedges slide past and slow their pace as she eases up on the gas and finally looks around instead of just ahead. He's here somewhere. She parks two feet from the curb and stretches and it's past lunchtime. She squeezes her stomach with five fingers and gets out of the car. She leans her back against the driver's side, shutting her eyes and letting her head roll back until it rests on the roof.

Her nails gouging into tension-hardened shoulders that pressed her into place while teeth found her neck, her jaw, and her ear, and her mouth forgot how to do anything but hang slack. Glorious weakness invading her extremities, from hips to toes and shoulder blades to fingertips, leaving her to cling with her nails into his flesh.

She opens her eyes, because he's standing in front of her. "Hi."

"What are you doing here?"

"I was in the area," she drawls, crooked grin.

Damn him, she can never read his face. "Why are you here, Nancy?" There might have been a waver in his voice, but she isn't sure. It would be out of character, but so is running away. (Is that what he did, or only what she did?)

"Redemption?"

He snorts. "Think you're looking at Saint Peter?"

He's being hostile or he's being humorous or some kind of ironic that's over her head. She moistens her lips.

"How are you?"

He snorts again and shakes his head. "Nancy Botwin."

"It was just a question."

"Fine."

"Fine like 'fine, it was a question,' or fine like you're _doing_ fine?"

"Fine like 'fine, now tell me what the fuck is going on here.'"

"I don't… I wanted to see you. See how you were?" She speaks haltingly. She's forgotten how to keep up with him when he's angry. (She's forgotten how her body responds when he says _fuck_, a thrill through her blood no matter the context.)

"I'm standing."

"Yeah?"

"We're growing. Building it up all over." His _we_ is like a smack on the hand, probably unintentional, but it strikes her that it's been longer than she can remember since Conrad used that pronoun and she wasn't included in it.

"I'm happy for you."

He snorts again. "Bullshit."

"It isn't-" she tries to protest, but he cuts her off.

"Bull. Shit. You're not happy for me, you're not happy for Heylia. You didn't drive hours up here to wish us well and drop off a fruit cake. I don't know why you're here or what you want from me, and I don't have time to figure it out or play your games, get it, I don't have _time _to get pulled sideways! Now you're gonna open up those pretty eyes and you're gonna want something, and I _can't-_"

"_Conrad._" She says his name for the first time, she shouts it, and his tirade skids to a halt. "I wanted to see _you_, okay, I don't want anything except to see you and to know that you're okay." She pushes off the car and takes a step towards him, and he backs up and sticks out an arm.

"Uh-uh. I'm not doing this, Nance."

His hot breath in her ear and the steady throb of their bodies swollen together, the way his arms held her still for what felt like the first time in months.

Maybe she doesn't want him to be okay, because she's not.

"Please." The word floats out of her on a breath, and he could just take her now, grab her and carry her inside and fuck her to temporary oblivion; on a table with her bare damp thighs hugging his waist and she'll say _This feels familiar_ and slide her tongue over his ear.

"I've had enough mess. And Nancy, your mess just gets everywhere. You can't help it."

His words are pushing her away; she has to push back. She tries again to get closer, goes so far as to tilt her head up, seeking his mouth with hers, and he grabs her arms so hard that his grip twists her skin; he shoves her away and her back bounces off the car.

She honestly thinks for an instant that he is going to fuck her here and now, lift her and skewer her to the car door.

He walks away.

Her stomach tightens with something like panic, because she always thought he was the one person who would never run out of rope.

He walks away. He is turning his back on her.

Her promised land. Her happy ending. She can almost hear them sizzle as they dissipate with the end of his rope and the end of his promise.

He walks away and she gets it, now, finally: her home has gone up in flames.


End file.
